Vt. Cell Phone Merger Under Scrutiny

That message, contained in a letter sent earlier this month from the Department of Homeland Security to the Federal Communications Commission, represents one of several recent bumps in the road for a merger that also is drawing questions from some quarters on antitrust grounds.

Gregory Pinto, director of regulatory affairs at Homeland Security, said in his Nov. 9 letter that the Department of Justice and FBI concurred with Homeland Security's request that federal regulators hold off on granting approval until the agencies have done their reviews.

He said the agencies are "currently reviewing this matter for any national security, law enforcement and public safety issues, but the agencies have not yet completed that effort." He asked the FCC to wait for the agencies to sign off on the deal before approving it.

Spokeswomen for Verizon and Homeland Security both called the review routine, and Verizon's Nancy Stark said the delay requested by the agencies was separate from that granted by the FCC at the request of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.

The FCC recently granted VPIRG's request for a 90-day extension for groups opposed to the merger to file petitions at the FCC. The comment period was to have closed Nov. 13. Last Friday, Verizon asked the FCC to reconsider its decision to grant the VPIRG request.

Vermont lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the administration of Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, has been in the forefront of the effort to question the merger, which the companies announced in September.

A log of documents in the case on the FCC Web site indicates that only Sanders, VPIRG and the Vermont Department of Public Service have sought to question the merger.

Both Sanders and the DPS, which represents Vermont consumers in utility issues, have pointed to issues surrounding the type of cell phone technology the companies use.

As things stand now, Verizon uses one type of cell-phone technology, called CDMA, while Unicel, which is owned by Rural Cellular Corp., uses the other major type, GSM. If Verizon is the sole cellular phone company serving Vermont, GSM could disappear, making subscribers of AT&T and other companies that use GSM unable to use their phones.